This invention relates to article handling methods and apparatus including automatic control means for preventing overfeeding articles (copies) and misfeed recovery with respect to a plurality of output portions.
In document reproduction machines having a high-speed copy reproduction portion and a document output portion, the reproduction portion usually can reproduce more documents than can be stored in either a noncollate output tray or a collate output portion. Many of these machines are sufficiently fast in document reproduction that operator control is ineffective to prevent a paper jam; i.e., the document reproduction portion may supply more documents than can be handled by either the collator or the tray. Since a jam can occur any place along a paper path, the machine should compensate for same by always producing a requested number of copies.